Category Archives: The Power of the Mind

Many beginner meditators, myself included, start out with a mindful breathing meditation: one breath in, one breath out, the mind wanders, you bring it back.

Armed with an app guiding me through this meditation, I practiced dutifully for several months—but eventually I fell off the wagon. It just stopped feeling right for me.

I didn’t know there were other types of meditation to try. That’s why a new study published in the journal Mindfulness is so encouraging: It compares four different types of meditation, and finds that they each have their own unique benefits. Mindful breathing isn’t the only place to start—and it’s not the end of meditation, either.

One thing I tell my students when they begin a meditation practice is to let go of trying to do it perfectly. There is no perfect. You can’t mess it up. Just begin. And you’ll see how meditation benefits your mind and body.

An eight week study conducted by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) determined that meditation literally rebuilds the brains grey matter in just eight weeks. It’s the very first study to document that meditation produces changes over time in the brain’s grey matter.

Too often we fail to put aside time for ourselves, time to strengthen our mind beyond academic means. We over train, over study, and rarely stop to smell the roses, stop to take a deep breath, stop to take care of ourselves. Here are 5 simple ways to put yourself and your mental well-being first…

help you focus
give you more time
relax more deeply
sleep better
stay calm and centred in the midst of a busy life
achieve more of your life’s and daily goals
stop procrastinating
have better sex
build grey matter in your brain
and help you be more creative and solution focused….?

What do you do for fun? This is an important question I have started to ask patients so I can get to know them better and assess whether they find joy in their lives. I appreciate that the absence of joy can be a significant contributor to absence of personal health and sense of wellness.